Ruth set her teeth. She felt as if she had received a blow.
When he spoke again it was on the subject of street-paving defects in
New York City.
* * * * *
It was true, as Ruth had said, that they did not dine with the Baileys
every night, but that seemed to Kirk, as the days went on, the one and
only bright spot in the new state of affairs. He could not bring
himself to treat life with a philosophical resignation. His was not
open revolt. He was outwardly docile, but inwardly he rebelled
furiously.
Perhaps the unnaturally secluded life which he had led since his
marriage had unfitted him for mixing in society even more than nature
had done. He had grown out of the habit of mixing. Crowds irritated
him. He hated doing the same thing at the same time as a hundred other
people.
Like most Bohemians, he was at his best in a small circle. He liked his
friends as single spies, not in battalions. He was a man who should
have had a few intimates and no acquaintances; and his present life was
bounded north, south, east, and west by acquaintances. Most of the men
to whom he spoke he did not even know by name.
He would seek information from Ruth as they drove home.
'Who was the pop-eyed second-story man with the bald head and the
convex waistcoat who glued himself to me to-night?'
'If you mean the fine old gentleman with the slightly prominent eyes
and rather thin hair, that was Brock Mason, the vice-president of
consolidated groceries. You mustn't even think disrespectfully of a man
as rich as that.'
'He isn't what you would call a sparkling talker.'
'He doesn't have to be. His time is worth a hundred dollars a minute,
or a second, I forget which.'
'Put me down for a nickel's worth next time.'
And then they began to laugh over Ruth's suggestion that they should
save up and hire Mr. Mason for an afternoon and make him keep quiet all
the time; for Ruth was generally ready to join him in ridiculing their
new acquaintances. She had none of that reverence for the great and the
near-great which, running to seed, becomes snobbery.
It was this trait in her which kept alive, long after it might have
died, the hope that her present state of mind was only a phase, and
that, when she had tired of the new game, she would become the old Ruth
of the studio. But, when he was honest with himself, he was forced to
admit that she showed no signs of ever tiring of it.
They had drifted apart. They were out of touch with each other. It was
not an uncommon state of things in the circle in which Kirk now found
himself. Indeed, it seemed to him that the semi-detached couple was the
rule rather than the exception.
But there was small consolation in this reflection. He was not at all
interested in the domestic troubles of the people he mixed with. His
own hit him very hard.
Ruth had criticized little Mrs. Bailey, but there was no doubt that she
